Free Double Take by Melody Carlson Page A

began to question the likelihood of a scene like that actually unfolding.
    “Here we are,” Garret said as he reached across her to open the door. “Want me to walk you up?”
    She considered this. It might simplify things to have his help finding her way through the building. But what if she forgot the doorman’s name or needed to pull out her notes to help with the security code in the penthouse? “No thank you,” she said.
    “The reservation is for nine,” he told her.
    She turned away to hide her shock. Dinner at nine o’clock? Her family would be asleep in bed by then.
    “Can you be back down here by, say, 8:45?”
    “Yes.” She forced a smile as she got out of the car. “8:45.” She hurried up to the building, under the awning that was just as Madison had described. She smiled at the doorman. “Hello, Henry.”
    “Good evening and welcome home, Miss Van Buren.” He smiled back at her as he opened the door.
    Beyond the glass doors, she stepped into a space as big as Daed’s barn, but instead of dirt, there was a shiny floor made of some kind of stone and an enormous, elegant carpet, plus several chairs and a huge hanging lamp overhead that would easily fill Anna’s entire house. Anna tried not to look too stunned or overly impressed at what Madison had explained was a lobby—a place to wait or just pass through—as she went over to what she assumed were the elevators.
    “After the lobby, you go to the narrow part of the building,” Madison had told her when Anna had questioned how she would possibly recognize an elevator—unless it was a grain elevator, which was not the situation. “There you’ll see three sets of brass doors and buttons that are lit up. You use the elevator that’s on a wall by itself, then you push up for up and down for down.”
    At the time, Anna had giggled, thinking that it all sounded rather obvious and easy. Now she was glad Madison had been so specific. Push up for up, she told herself as she pressed the button next to the single set of doors.
    “When you’re inside, the doors will close—”
    “By themselves?” Anna had asked.
    Madison laughed. “Yes. They open and close by themselves. When you’re inside, you slide this card”—she showed her a silvery card—“into the slot until you see a green light, and then you push the button with the number 26 on it.”
    Now that Anna was inside, she looked around for a place to slide the card. After some time she found it, and after two tries she saw a green light. Then she pushed the number 26 button and waited, wondering why everything was so complicated here.
    Suddenly it felt as if she were shooting straight up into the air. She reached for a rail on the wall, clinging to it as her head grew lighter. Did anyone ever faint in an elevator? There was a whooshing sound, and after a few seconds the doors opened, again by themselves. As she got out, she felt a strange popping inside her ears. This was all very odd, and she was thankful she’d asked Garret to wait downstairs. He would have thought she was crazy if he’d witnessed her just now.
    As Madison had explained, Anna emerged into a foyer, which was another place to wait. This space had no windows, but it had a black leather couch and a black-and-white chair as well as a big, strange painting on the wall. There was a pair of big red doors off to the side. “Punch the code numbers into the keypad by the red doors,” Madison had instructed.
    Anna had tried to memorize the code numbers, but so much had happened that she didn’t trust her memory right now. She pulled the pages out of her purse and looked for the numbers, then carefully pressed them in. She heard a clicking noise, then she tried the door, and—just like that—it opened. She had made it—all the way to New York City, to Manhattan, and into Madison’s penthouse!
    “Ah.” She closed the door, leaned against it, and sighed joyfully. “Home sweet home.”
    “Miss Madison?”
    Anna stood up